The
Print Management console in Windows Server 2008 R2 helps organizations
better manage and administer printers on an enterprise basis. Prior to
the Print Management console, a network administrator would have to
point to each network printer or printer server individually to manage
and administer the device. For a large enterprise with hundreds of
printers and dozens of printer servers, this was a very tedious task to
select print servers each and every time a printer needed to be managed.
Furthermore, if the administrator didn’t remember which printer was
attached to which print server, it could take a while to eventually find
the printer and print server that needed management.
The Print Management
console provides a single interface where an administrator can open the
Print Management console, and view all printers and print servers in the
enterprise. Furthermore, it could be configured to group printers
together so that certain administrators could manage and administer only
certain printers. As an example, if an organization has an
administrator for a particular building, the Print Management interface could
be filtered to only list printers within the building. This would allow
the administrator to only see certain printers they are responsible
for, as well as consolidate multiple print server groups of printers
into a single interface for management and administration.
The Print Management
component only needs to be installed on the system that the
administrator is managing from—it does not need to be installed on all
print servers or systems in the enterprise. Functionally, Print
Management could be installed on just one system. However, it is
automatically installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 servers with the Print
Service role installed.
Installing the Print Management Console
The Print Management
console is installed as one of the Remote Server Administration Tools in
the features or as part of the Print Server role of Windows Server 2008
R2. To install the Print Management console on a management server that
is not a print server, complete the following steps:
1. | Launch Server Manager.
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2. | Select the Features folder and click the Add Features link.
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3. | Expand the Remote Server Administration Tools.
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4. | Expand the Role Administration Tools.
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5. | Select the Print and Document Services Tools check box.
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6. | Click Next.
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7. | Click Install to install the snap-in.
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8. | Click Close to close the wizard.
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Now the Print Management console will be available within Server Manager on the server.
Configuring the Print Management Console
After the Print
Management console has been installed on a system, the utility needs to
be configured to identify the printers and print servers in the
enterprise. Printers can be manually added to the Print Management
console for administration and management, or the network can be scanned
to attempt to automatically identify printers in the enterprise.
To configure print management resources, launch the Print Management console by doing the following:
1. | Select Start.
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2. | Select Administrative Tools.
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3. | Select Print Management.
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Upon opening the Print Management console, a screen will appear similar to the one shown in Figure 1.
Adding New Printers as Network Shared Resources
There are two ways to add
new printers to a Windows Server 2008 R2 network. One way is the
standard Windows printer installation method of using the Add Printer
option. The other option is using the new Print Management console and
adding a printer within the utility.
Both methods return the same result, so the main reason to use the
Print Management console method is to simplify all print management
tasks of adding, modifying, and managing printers from a single utility.
Using the Add Printer Option in Windows to Add a Local Printer
To add a new printer that
is locally attached to a print server using the standard Windows Add
Printer option method, do the following:
1. | Select Start, Control Panel, and double-click on Devices and Printers.
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2. | Click on the Add a Printer button to launch the Add Printer Wizard.
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3. | Because the printer is locally attached to the print server, click Add a Local Printer.
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4. | Choose the port (LPT1, LPT2, COM1, COM2, and so on) to which the printer is attached, and then click Next.
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5. | Choose
the manufacturer and the printer type of the printer being added (such
as HP for manufacturer, and LaserJet P2015 PCL6 for printer type), and
then click Next.
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6. | When prompted, give the printer a name (such as HP LaserJet P2015 PCL6 in the Marketing Dept), and then click Next.
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7. | When
prompted whether you want to share the printer, select the Share Name
option and type in a name that will describe the printer (such as
HP20016MKTG), and then click Next.
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8. | If
you want to print a test page, click the Print a Test Page button;
otherwise, click Finish to complete the addition of the printer.
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Using the Add Printer Option in the Print Management Console
Another method of adding a
printer to the network is to use the Print Management console to add the
printer. This process is identical to adding the printer using the
Windows Add Printer option addressed in the previous section; however,
rather than using two separate interfaces for adding and managing
printers, using the Print Management console can centralize the tasks
into a single interface.
To start the Network Printer Installation Wizard within the Print Management console, do the following:
1. | Expand the Print Servers section of the Print Management console.
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2. | Right-click on one of the print servers listed in the Print Servers section of the interface, and choose Add Printer.
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3. | If
the printer is attached directly to the print server, choose Add a New
Printer Using an Existing Port and follow the instructions in the “Using the Add Printer Option in Windows to Add a Local Printer” section of this article.
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Adding Print Servers to the Print Management Console
After printers and print
servers have been added to the network as noted in the previous
sections, an administrator can now begin to add print servers to the
Print Management console to centrally view, manage, and maintain the
printers on the network.
Adding
a print server to the Print Management console allows the administrator
to manage the print server and all the printers the print server hosts.
To add a print server to the Print Management console, do the
following:
1. | Right-click on the Print Servers item in the Print Management console, and choose Add/Remove Servers.
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2. | Type
in the name of the print server you want to add, or click on Browse and
search the Microsoft Windows network to view the various servers in the
environment.
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3. | Click OK to add the print server.
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Using the Print Management Console
With printers added to
the network, and print servers added to the Print Management console, an
administrator can now begin to centrally view, manage, and administer
the printers and print servers. Some of the tasks that an administrator
can perform from the Print Management console are tasks that an
administrator would normally do right on the print server, such as
change printer ports, add or modify forms, or view the status of
printers whether the printers are online or not. Other tasks are new to
the Print Management console, such as creating custom printer filters
that allow multiple administrators to view and manage selected printers
based on their site, rights, and roles.
Performing General Printer Administration Tasks
From within the Print
Management console, the administrator can perform general printer
administration tasks. Some of these tasks include the following:
Updating printer drivers—
By right-clicking the Drivers item in the Print Server section of the
Print Management console and choosing Manage Drivers, an administrator
can update or change the printer driver of a printer. This is rarely
done in a network environment, but there are times when a new printer
add-on, such as an envelope feeder or expansion paper feeder or sorter,
is added, and a new printer driver is needed to support the new add-on.
Managing forms—
By right-clicking on the Forms item in the Print Server section and
choosing Manage Forms, an administrator can create and delete new forms
to support different size paper or to specify a custom letterhead paper
form. Additionally within this interface, an administrator can change
the printer port that a printer is attached to on a print server, define
log settings, and enable the function to have users notified when a
print job has successfully completed printing.
Note
You might wonder when someone
would ever create a new printer form or worry about being notified when
a print job has been completed, especially when most print jobs are
simple 1-page emails or a handful of pages of a Microsoft Word document.
However, a creative use of this feature is used by accounting
departments, publishers, or other individuals who print large print
jobs. For example, you would want to know when a 400-page document has
finished printing, or when 100 sets of a 15-page document has completed
being printed, collated, and stapled by the printer.
By creating a custom
form—which might just be a simple 8-1/2 × 11 form, but with advanced
notifications enabled to notify the user that the job has been
completed—a user who chooses that form instead of the normal 8-1/2 × 11
form will be notified when the print job has been completed.
Creating Custom Filters
A unique function of the Print
Management console is the Custom Filters function that enables
administrators to group printers typically for the purpose of
distributing the administration of printers in the environment. For
large organizations that might have multiple buildings, sites, and
administration boundaries of devices such as printers, the
administrators can perform a filter view to see only the printers that
fit within their administrative responsibilities.
First, to view all printers in
the environment, an administrator can click on the All Printers section
of the Custom Filters section of the Print Management console. All of
the printers for the network will be listed here.
To create a custom printers view, do the following:
1. | Right-click on the Custom Filters View in the Print Management console, and choose Add New Printer Filter.
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2. | Type in a descriptive name for this filter view, such as All Printers in the Oakland Site.
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3. | Check the Display the Total Number of Printers Next to the Name of the Printer Filter check box. Click Next.
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4. | In
the Field drop-down list, choose a field that will contain information
that can be filtered. In many cases, the print servers can be filtered
because a print server frequently services printers in a specific
geography. Alternately, organizations that entered in location
information for printers such as Building 11 would be able to filter for
that designation in a custom printer filter filtered by name. An
example might be Field=Location, Condition=Contains, Value=Oakland.
Click Next to continue.
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5. | On
the Set Notification Options page, an administrator can note an email
address where the administrator would be notified on the status of
events related to the printers in the filter. You can also run a script.
This might include being emailed every time a printer is offline, or
every time a printer is out of paper. Enter in the appropriate email
information (email address, SMTP mail server to be used, and message
desired), or leave this section unchecked, and then click Finish.
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By clicking on the newly
created filter, the filter rule is applied and the printers noted in the
filter will be displayed, as shown in Figure 2. In this figure, you will notice that there
are five printers in the environment; however, the filter is searching
only for printers in Oakland, and, thus, only three printers are
displayed for this administrator to view and manage.
Virtually an unlimited
number of printer filters can be created to show different groupings of
printers to be managed or administered. Organizations have created
custom printer filters by printer manufacturer such as HP, Xerox, and
Sharp or by printer type such as laser, color laser, and plotter to be
able to view assets by make, model, or configuration. Printer filters
can even be created based on queue length and to run an automatic script
to take action in addition to notifying the administrator.
